Revelation 6:8

6:1-8 Christ, the Lamb, opens the first seal: observe what appeared. A rider on a white horse. By the going forth of this white horse, a time of peace, or the early progress of the Christian religion, seems to be intended; its going forth in purity, at the time when its heavenly Founder sent his apostles to teach all nations, adding, Lo! I am with you alway, even to the end of the world. The Divine religion goes out crowned, having the Divine favour resting upon it, armed spiritually against its foes, and destined to be victorious in the end. On opening the second seal, a red horse appeared; this signifies desolating judgments. The sword of war and persecution is a dreadful judgment; it takes away peace from the earth, one of the greatest blessings; and men who should love one another, and help one another, are set upon killing one another. Such scenes also followed the pure age of early Christianity, when, neglectful of charity and the bond of peace, the Christian leaders, divided among themselves, appealed to the sword, and entangled themselves in guilt. On opening the third seal, a black horse appeared; a colour denoting mourning and woe, darkness and ignorance. He that sat on it had a yoke in his hand. Attempts were made to put a yoke of superstitious observances on the disciples. As the stream of Christianity flowed further from its pure fountain, it became more and more corrupt.

During the progress of this black horse, the necessaries of life should be at excessive prices, and the more costly things should not be hurt. According to prophetic language, these articles signified that food of religious knowledge, by which the souls of men are sustained unto everlasting life; such we are invited to buy, Isa 55:1. But when the dark clouds of ignorance and superstition, denoted by the black horse, spread over the Christian world, the knowledge and practice of true religion became scarce. When a people loathe their spiritual food, God may justly deprive them of their daily bread. The famine of bread is a terrible judgment; but the famine of the word is more so. Upon opening the fourth seal, another horse appeared, of a pale colour. The rider was Death, the king of terrors. The attendants, or followers of this king of terrors, hell, a state of eternal misery to all who die in their sins; and in times of general destruction, multitudes go down unprepared into the pit. The period of the fourth seal is one of great slaughter and devastation, destroying whatever may tend to make life happy, making ravages on the spiritual lives of men. Thus the mystery of iniquity was completed, and its power extended both over the lives and consciences of men. The exact times of these four seals cannot be ascertained, for the changes were gradual.

Pale (χλωρὸς) Only in Revelation, except Mark 6:39. Properly, greenish-yellow, like young grass or unripe wheat. Homer applies it to honey, and Sophocles to the sand. Generally, pale, pallid. Used of a mist, of sea-water, of a pale or bilious complexion. Thucydides uses it of the appearance of persons stricken with the plague (ii., 49). In Homer it is used of the paleness of the face from fear, and so as directly descriptive of fear ("Iliad," x., 376; xv., 4). Of olive wood ("Odyssey," ix., 320, 379) of which the bark is gray. Gladstone says that in Homer it indicates rather the absence than the presence of definite color. In the New Testament, always rendered green, except here. See Mark 6:39; Revelation 8:7; Revelation 9:14. Hell Properly, Hades. The realm of the dead personified. See on Matthew 16:18. Power (ἐξουσία) See on Mark 2:10; see on 2 Peter 2:11. Rev., better, authority. With the sword (ἐν ῥομφαίᾳ) Another word for sword. Compare Revelation 6:4, and see on Luke 2:35. With death (ἐι θανάτῳ) Or pestilence. The Hebrew deber, pestilence, is rendered by the Greek word for death in the Septuagint. See Jeremiah 14:12; Jeremiah 21:7. Compare the term black-death applied to an Oriental plague which raged in the fourteenth century. With the beasts (ὑπὸ τῶν θηρίων) Rev., by.

The preposition ὑπό by is used here instead of ἐν in or with, indicating more definitely the actual agent of destruction; while ἐν denotes the element in which the destruction takes place, and gives a general indication of the manner in which it was wrought. With these four judgments compare Ezekiel 14:21.

A pale horse; a horse of the colour of his rider, Death, which makes men look pale, and bringeth them into the state of the dead, (here translated hell ), whether heaven or hell, as they have lived. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth; over a great part of the earth. To kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth; to kill men all manner of ways, with the sword, famine, pestilence, and by throwing them to wild beasts. Interpreters judge that here was prophesied what should happen to the Roman empire, and the church within it, from the time when Maximinus was made emperor, which was about the year 237, to the time of Aurelianus, which was about 271. Some extend it to Dioclesian’s time, which ended about 294; but Mr. Mede rather reserveth that for the fifth seal. If the former time only be taken in, there was within it the seventh, eighth, and ninth persecutions; Dioclesian began the tenth and greatest of all. Within this time this prophecy was eminently fulfilled: Maximinus destroyed all the towns in Germany, for three or four hundred miles. There was a plague lasted fifteen years together in the time of Gallus, who had the empire Anno 255. Three hundred and twenty thousand Goths were slain by Flavius Claudius. Maximinus and Gallienus were both great butchers, both to their own subjects that were heathens, and to Christians. Gallienus is said to have killed three or four thousand every day.

8 . a pale horse ] Or livid , lit. green , as in Revelation 8:7 , but used constantly of the paleness of the human face when terror-struck, or dead or dying. It is not certain whether it here expresses a possible colour for a real horse: it seems not very appropriate for the “grisled” of Zechariah 6:3 . Perhaps it might apply to the colour of the bare skin of a mangy horse. and his name &c.] Lit. and he that sat upon him, his name was Death . that sat on him ] Alford remarks on the fact that the phrase for “upon him” is different from that used of the previous riders, and may be rendered “on the top of him,” perhaps taking it to suggest that the spectre (or skeleton, or demon?) did not ride astride and manage his horse, but simply sat clumsily on his back. and Hell ] Hades, personified as a demon, as in Revelation 20:13-14 . He follows Death, to devour those slain by him. the fourth part of the earth ] No good explanation of this proportion has been given: the best is, that the four riders divide the earth between them, and that the three afflict or decimate their subjects, while the last exterminates his. with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth ] God’s “four sore judgements,” Ezekiel 14:21 . For “pestilence” there the LXX have “death,” which fixes the sense of the word in this clause: but the personified Death, the rider, is not to be so limited; he is the sovereign over all four modes of death.

Revelation 6:8 . Χλωρὸς ) χλωρὸς , ch. Revelation 8:7 , is green; but here it is pale , ὠχρός , which sense is confirmed by Eustathius: as also the Septuagint renders the Hebrew ירק by each of these Greek words.— ἐξουσία ἐπὶ τὸ τέταρτον ) There is a similar construction, ἐπὶ with an accusative, ch. Revelation 16:9 .— ἐν θανάτῳ ) by pestilence. דבר pestilence; Septuagint, θάνατος , Exodus 9:3 ; 2 Samuel 24:13 , and repeatedly. [An accumulation of different calamities.—V. g.]

Revelation 6:8 . χλωρός , pale or livid as a corpse.— ἐπάνω αὐτοῦ , for the ordinary ἐπʼ αὐτόν , a grammatical variation which has no special significance. In this Dureresque vignette the spectre of Hades, bracketed here as elsewhere with Death, accompanies the latter to secure his booty of victims. So Nergal, the Babylonian Pluto, is not content with ruling the regions of the dead but appears as an active personification of violent destruction, especially pestilence and war, inflicting his wounds on large masses rather than on individuals (Jastrow, 66, 67). A similar duality of conception, local and personal, obtained in Semitic and Hellenic mythology ( cf e.g. , Revelation 9:11 ); only, Death is not here personified as an angel (with Jewish theology, cf. Eisenmenger’s Eindecktes Jud. i. 854 f., 862 f.). As the chief partner in this grim league, he is given destructive power over a certain quarter of the earth ( τὸ τέτ . colloquially); his agents are the usual apocalyptic scourges ( cf. Ezekiel 14:21 , Ps. Sol. 13:2 f., with Plut. Iside , 47 for the Iranian expectation of λοιμὸς καὶ λιμός as inflictions of Ahriman) against which the Jewish evening prayer was directed (“keep far from us the enemy, the pestilence, the sword, famine and affliction”). War, followed by famine which bred pestilence, was familiar in Palestine (Jos. Antiq. xv. 9) during the first century A.D.

Indeed throughout the ancient world war and pestilence were closely associated, while wild beasts multiplied and preyed on human life, as the land was left untilled. In Test. Naphth. 8, etc., Beliar is the captain of wild beasts. Note that the prophet sees only the commissions, not the actual deeds, of these four dragoons: not until Revelation 6:12 f. does anything happen. The first four seals are simply arranged on the rabbinic principle (Sohar Gen. fol. 91), “quodcunque in terra est, id etiam in coelo est, et nulla res tarn exigua est in mundo quae non ab alia simili quae in coelo est dependeat”. The four plagues (a Babylonian idea) are adapted from Ezekiel 14:12 f. Contemporary disasters which may have lent vividness to the sketch are collected by Renan (pp. 323 f.).